Ironclad: Battle for Blood: Pretty Much What You’d Expect from a Sequel

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Ironclad, Ironclad: Battle for Blood, Medieval England, Medieval Europe, Michelle Fairley, Tom Austen, Tom Rhys Harries

So Ironclad, the 2011 independent film about the Siege of Rochester castle in 1215 was popular enough that in 2014 they released a follow-up, Ironclad: Battle for Blood. About the only person returning is director Jonathan English, and in the grand tradition of sequels, this one is much lower-profile. Where the original had a number of big-name actors (James Purefoy, Paul Giamatti, Charles Dance, and Derek Jacobi in particular), the only well-known actor this time around is Michelle Fairley, who played the ill-fated Catelyn Stark on Game of Thrones. She’s given almost nothing to do as the wife of Gilbert de Vesci, a besieged castle-owner, but she does it marvelously.

The film is set six years after the events of the first film, and at the opposite end of England, on the English border with Scotland. The De Vesci family has held a castle there for three generations, and local Scottish clan leader Maddog (Predrag Bjelac) has decided to attack the castle because the English have a habit of raping and murdering Scottish women, including Maddog’s wife and daughters. So, armed with a limitless supply of generic fantasy Scottish warriors, he lays siege to the castle, trapping Gilbert, his wife Joan, their two daughters Blanche (the whiny but slightly plucky one) and Kate (the hard-working but mostly helpless one), and their young son Hubert (Tom Rhys Harries) inside, along with a large number of generic servants and guards, including Mr. and Mrs. Smith, a couple so forward-thinking that they’ve decided to adopt surnames more than century before anyone else in the British Isles.

But Gilbert realizes they don’t have enough fighting men to hold the castle, so he sends Hubert out in search of his cousin Guy de Lusignan, who happens to be the young Guy the Squire from the first Ironclad, all grown up into a completely different actor (Tom Austen). Guy has been so traumatized by his experiences at Rochester that he’s become a bare-knuckle prize-fighter. But Hubert persuades him to help the family, and along they way back they pick up Berengar, another prize-fighter who owes Guy his life; an executioner named Charles Montserrat Pierrepoint III; and Crazy Mary (Twinnie Lee Moore), a psychotic serial killer that Pierrepoint was supposed to execute for killing a dozen men. They manage to get back into the castle, and from that point on, the film largely follows the script of the first Ironclad: increasingly desperate battles to keep the attackers out, increasing failure to keep the attackers out, the gradual death of most of the named characters in a rain of graphic violence, the suicide of an important character, and a tiny number of emotionally traumatized survivors.

Austen as the poorly-named Guy de Lusignan

The film has a serious problem with names. The De Vescis all get names appropriate to a family of Norman English extraction. But the name Charles Montserrat Pierrepoint III is just laughably anachronistic, and the only named Scottish character, Maddog, is using a Welsh name, Madoc, because all them Celts are pretty much the same culture anyway. But the biggest problem is Guy (which ought to be pronounced ‘Ghee’, but isn’t) de Lusignan, who is apparently related to a major French family whose members include King Guy de Lusignan of Jerusalem. In the first film, Guy doesn’t get any sort of loconym or family name; he’s just Guy the Squire. But for this film the screenwriter decided to just grab the first historical ‘Guy’ he could find, without pausing to think that naming his character after one of the most famous Crusading figures might be a tad bit unwise. It’s sort of like writing a contemporary film with a character named George and deciding to name him ‘George W. Bush’ without bothering to comment on it.

But that really typifies this film’s approach to its subject. While the first film did a reasonably good job of reproducing the basic events of the Siege of Rochester and its historical context, this film just makes up a minor conflict on the Anglo-Scottish border, with no roots in actually events beyond the general fact that the English and the Scots fought regularly along the border for several hundred years. The de Vescis are fictional, Maddog is fictional, and this Guy de Lusginan is fictional. The film also tosses in a variety of anachronisms; I’ve already mentioned two wildly wrong names. Hubert pays Guy in guineas; he might as well pay him with travelers’ checks, since guineas won’t be minted until the 17^th century.

But the biggest anachronism comes at the end of the film, when a voice-over by Hubert tells us that Guy left England to fight in the Hundred Years War. The Hundred Years War won’t start for another 112 years after the time of this film. It’s sort of like setting a film during the American Revolution and telling us that when things were all over George Washington (but not that George Washington) left to fight in the First World War.

Rhys Harries wishing his career had gotten off to a stronger start

Despite the overt historical ineptitude, the plot that mostly rehashes the first film, and the wildly predictable details (Blanche and Guy have a meet-hostile, so you know that by the end of the film they’re going to kiss), the film does offer a few small interesting moments. When Hubert returns with his Seven Samurai four warriors (the budget was small, so they had to trim out the other three warriors), the castle is being attacked, and the heroes have to make a frantic run for the sally port, a small, heavily fortified back door that most castles actually had; the most tense moment in the whole film is whether anyone inside the castle will realize that the heir to the castle is pounding on the sally port before the Scots realize it and kill him and his men.

Later, once they’re inside, Guy and Hubert actually analyze the strategic situation with some intelligence. And Maddog shows a modicum of actual tactical cunning; he tortures a captured Englishman outside the castle as a diversion so a couple of his men (well, one man and one warrior woman) can climb up the chute of the garderobe (the latrine) and get into the castle. When word goes up that someone has gotten into the tower, Guy realizes that this is actually itself a diversion so the Scots can attack the walls while the defenders are distracted by the frantic search of the castle. (At least one actual castle really was captured when soldiers climbed up a garderobe chute, so the film deserves some credit for getting something right.)

But don’t expect too much tactical cunning in the film. Early on, Maddog uses a ballista, but the film promptly forgets that he has it, and for the rest of the film the only siege equipment he has are some ladders. Despite that, his men eventually force their way in, basically by hurling lots of burning tree branches over the walls and starting the whole castle on fire (fires that conveniently go out after the bad guys have gotten inside). He also, as I said, has an unlimited supply of generic Scottish grunts who fight fanatically for no reason other than disliking the English.

This photo tells you pretty much all you need to know about the Scots in this film

The Scots are pretty much straight out of a bad fantasy movie. They dress in random scraps of cloth, fur, leather, and chainmail, with the occasional kilt thrown in, and most of them wear blue face paint. The sleeve-less leather chemise and the chainmail bikini were apparently fashionable in fantasy Scotland in the late 12th century, as the above photo shows. They also include a good number of vicious warrior women, who we know are vicious because they usually look at the camera through their eyebrows, just like Crazy Mary does. And we know she’s crazy because she gets real stabby with guys and then smiles or laughs.

Crazy Mary showing us why she got that nickname.

Although Guy does all the important fighting, Hubert is really in many ways the main character. The siege proves his coming of age, and he finds himself driven by his need to honor his father’s death by holding the castle at all costs. He gradually awakens Guy’s sense of family solidarity, which is the major theme of the film. The confusing subtitle (aren’t all battles ‘for blood’ in some sense?) is actually a reference to the family bloodline and the need for the fractured de Vesci clan to hold together in the face of adversity.

Maddog, in contrast, is boringly two-dimensional. He hates the English for events that happen before the film. His son is killed in the first assault on the castle, but this death, which ought to provide him with a suitable motivation to ruin the de Vescis, is barely mentioned again. He also has a penchant for shouting “English!” a lot. Eventually I started to think that perhaps he was yelling at the director for giving him such a thankless role.

However, for all that, the film does offer one genuinely interesting scene, at least genuinely interesting to me, given my interest in depictions of women in film. At one point, young Hubert walks in on Crazy Mary undressed. She shows him her tits before covering up, and then proceeds to rape him. He struggles with her but she overpowers him, pushes him down and mounts him. His struggles slowly get weaker, but at no point in the scene is it clear that he’s enjoying what’s happening. In true cinematic fashion, rape turns to interest, and he’s upset when he later catches Mary bumping uglies with Berengar. But Rhys Harries does a good job mixing attraction with confusion over what has happened between him and Mary. And the inversion of the gender roles in the scene is interesting, primarily because it’s so uncommon.

About the only other feature of interest is the film’s focus, borrowed from the first film, on the psychological strain of the siege. The violence is fairly graphic; at one point we get to watch Gilbert’s shattered arm be surgically amputated with a saw, and several people have their collar bones cleaved through. Guy is already emotionally damaged by the events at Rochester, and this siege just adds to his sense of horror. The young Hubert has to watch the slaughter knowing that he is responsible for the lives of everyone in the castle. And the de Vesci women get their fair share of emotional trauma as well. Kate is mostly incapable of protecting herself, but Blanche finds some strength at a few key moments.

What I find interesting about all that is that modern action films are typically disinterested in the emotional impact of violence. The hero is often given some manpain through the death of his wife/daughter/girlfriend/Shih Tzu at the hands of the villain, but the killings he commits are usually without emotional ramification. However in this film, there is a good deal of mourning for the dead, and repeated slow-motion shots of people dying or lying dead. Guy’s emotional turmoil is not generic manpain but post-traumatic stress disorder. Nor does the film repeat the first Ironclad’s use of the Woman as Prize trope. Guy gets nothing for his suffering except survival and perhaps a renewed sense of closeness to his family.

Maddog and his generic fantasy Scots

Ironclad: Battle for Blood is not a particularly good film. In fact, most of the battle scenes are downright boring because they’re so predictable, especially if you’ve seen the first movie. The climactic fight between Guy and Maddog goes on for far too long, and the ending of it is a little puzzling (why does the hulking Scotsman throw one of the crazy Scottish warrior women off the tower?). The few moments of real interest are mostly what happens between the battles. The poor quality of historical research results in some laughably bad mistakes. The villains are entirely borrowed from some low-budget Game of Thrones rip-off and Michelle Fairley is entirely wasted, apart from one nice conversation with Guy. It’s one of those films that’s best watched when you’re doing something else, like that pile of shirts that need to be ironed. But it’s not Dragon Knight, and that at least counts for something.

Want to Know More?

Ironclad: The Battle for Bloodis available from Amazon.

Ironclad: The Woman as the Prize

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Derek Jacobi, Ironclad, James Purefoy, Kate Mara, Medieval England, Medieval Europe, Woman as Prize

In my last post, I discussed Ironclad (2011, dir. Jonathan English), a film about the siege of Rochester in 1215. There’s a lot to like about the film, despite some of its historical errors, but there’s one part about it that I find troubling, namely its treatment of its main female character.

In the past few weeks, as people have reacted to the Isla Vista killings, many people have argued that the killer’s attitudes were in part the product of a culture that treats women as objects designed to serve men’s needs. It’s been pointed out that many films, especially action films, tend to re-enforce this idea. So, to help further this important discussion that’s taking place, I want to look at the way Ironclad treats its main female character, because I think it’s a good example of this extremely common, but also extremely problematic, tendency in films.

Ironclad is very much a man’s movie. It’s set solidly within the action movie genre, since the entire plot is about the siege of Rochester Castle. The extreme male-on-male violence falls into this genre as well. The cast also reflects this; it has 17 named characters, of whom only 3 are women (and one of them has such a small part I’m not even sure who she is; I think she might be an elderly lady-in-waiting). The film draws heavily off of Kurasawa’s Seven Samurai, and so its action is almost entirely concerned with the actions and choices of men, particularly its protagonist Thomas Marshall (James Purefoy). It fails the Bechdel test miserably (unless you count one line in which a lady in waiting tells Isabel to get back from a fight that’s broken out). The film is so deeply male-centric, the female characters could have been omitted entirely without affecting the plot in any way. So why are they even there?

Of the two female characters worth discussing, one of them, Agnes (Bree Condon) is a serving women at castallan Reginald de Cornhill’s household. She primarily functions as a sexual partner for one of the male soldiers who comes to the castle with Marshall. When John’s forces penetrate the bailey, she takes up a weapon and fights against them, but is killed. Her character gets little screen-time and virtually no character development, but at least she made more of an impression than the third female character.

The only important female in the film is Lady Isabel (Kate Mara), who is the wife of Cornhill (Derek Jacobi). She is a young woman married to a much older man who has no interest in her sexually. When Thomas arrives, she is drawn to him because he is such a strong contrast with her husband; Thomas is young, handsome, virile, and a strong leader and decision-maker, while Cornhill is old, hesitant, possibly impotent, and generally a weak leader. While Thomas is determined to hold the castle at all costs, Cornhill waivers repeatedly and has to be prevented from surrendering. Over the course of the siege Thomas and Isabel gradually grow closer, and eventually under her advances, he breaks his oath of celibacy and they have sex. At the end of the film, she is one of three survivors of the siege, along with Thomas and Guy, a young squire. She is last seen carried by Thomas on horseback as he rides away from the castle.

Kate Mara, wearing one of those classic 13th-century off-the-shoulder dresses

So her trajectory over the course of the film is to first be a forbidden fruit and then gradually to become Thomas’ woman. Her interest in Thomas is presented as entirely a function of Thomas’ superior masculinity in comparison to Cornhill. Thomas fights and suffers greatly over the course of the film, while Cornhill acts much like a fearful old woman. Whereas Thomas finds the internal strength to survive and fight to the end, Cornhill eventually loses his nerve and hangs himself. This is historically incorrect; he survived the siege and was taken prisoner by John after the surrender. As I’ve said before, it’s important to ask why a particular detail is ahistorical, and in this case the answer seems obvious; Cornhill has to die so that Isabel can pair off with Marshall at the end of the film.

Derek Jacobi being generally ineffectual

If this were as far as the film’s treatment of Isabel went, it would merely be a clichéd ending. But the film takes things a step further and makes it clear that Isabel’s function is to be a prize for Thomas. The contest in this film isn’t just between Thomas and Cornhill, after all. It’s between Thomas and King John and his villainous Viking captain Tiberius (really? A Viking named Tiberius? Sigh.) So Thomas doesn’t just ‘defeat’ Cornhill; he must defeat John and Tiberius as well, and in both cases, his prize is Cornhill’s wife.

At the start of the film, it’s clear that Thomas is a troubled man. He has some sort of secret that led him to become a Templar; this secret is never explained, but it’s clear that Thomas doesn’t really want to be a Templar any more. There is some talk early in the film of his taking a leave from the Templars (I’m not sure how that would work; is he released from his vow of chastity for a couple weeks?) Soon after his arrival at Rochester he abandons his vow of silence (which is a good thing, because a film whose central character can’t speak needs to have a much better script than this one). Then he breaks his vow of chastity by having sex with Isabel. Finally, after the siege is over, Archbishop Stephen Langton (Charles Dance) shows up and gives Thomas his freedom, allowing him to leave the Templars because he’s earned it. This is crucially important, because as a monk, Thomas cannot have a future with Isabel. So Thomas is rewarded for his successful defense of the castle with two interconnected rewards, his freedom from the Templars and his vows of silence and chastity, and Lady Isabel. In other words, he gets Lady Isabel almost explicitly because he ‘won’ the siege. She is almost literally his prize for coming in first in a masculinity contest.

At no point is she asked if she wants to be his; it’s simply assumed that since her husband is dead, she now belongs to Thomas. She is given no agency whatsoever, apart from making a sexual advance on him partway through the film. Whereas the slutty serving girl Agnes at least gets to choose to fight and die, Isabel is kept in the keep and is pushed from room to room to keep her safe.

Most tellingly, when the Vikings force their way into the keep for the final confrontation, Guy the squire is instructed that if the Vikings get past the last line of defense, Guy must kill Isabel, apparently so she won’t raped by the Vikings. This isn’t just a throw-away bit of dialog; Guy agonizes about this command and the film builds tension over whether he will have to carry it out. So in the film’s construction of the events, once Cornhill dies, Isabel simply becomes Thomas’ property, and if he can’t have her, she needs to be killed. In the film’s logic, Isabel must belong to the man who can defend her properly, regardless of whether this is what she wants or not, and if the film’s hero doesn’t get to live with her, her life is worthless.

Let me emphasize that. Isabel has no value of her own in this film. Her entire function is to validate Thomas’ struggle to hold onto the castle.

Thomas very subtlety implying that he has a huge schlong

The film presents this in traditional romantic terms, of course, which means that the film assumes that Isabel’s consent to be Thomas’ property is given the moment she offers herself to Thomas sexually. Having slept with Thomas, she is his, and makes no further choices. The film only gives her one motive for her choice, that she is obviously poorly suited to her husband.

The film never pauses to think that Thomas, by taking control of the castle, has essentially taken both her and her husband hostage to his determination to hold the castle. Nor does it consider that perhaps she offers herself to Thomas purely as a way to survive the siege because he’s obviously a safer bet than relying on her pathetic husband. Or perhaps she’s experiencing Stockholm Syndrome and fallen in love with her captor. Nor does it occur to the film that a poor, penniless knight is not necessarily the best choice of husband for a noble widow who has probably inherited all her late husband’s property. She is a good catch for Thomas, but what he offers her other than his virility is unexplained. But that’s because she’s not really a character in her own right; she’s a prize to be claimed by the victor of the struggle. His superior virility is enough to justify this wealthy prize.

Laid out in these terms, it’s easy to see how a film like Ironclad unintentionally contributes to the misogyny that is so powerfully present in modern American culture. Thomas, like the Isla Vista killer, is entitled to sex from the woman he wants, because her desires are entirely irrelevant. The narrative is male-centric, with Isabel functioning as nothing more than an object of desire. And if Thomas can’t have her, no one should. When films frequently fail to assign women any actual value beyond sex objects and prizes, it’s easy to see why a mentally ill man might come to the same conclusion, and then lash out at them when he fails to win them over. If he can’t have them, no one should.

Arthur Chu has done a good job of exploring exactly this dynamic in nerd culture, in his essay “Your Princess is in Another Castle: Misogyny, Entitlement, and Nerds”. Thomas Marshall gets lucky, because at the end of his adventure, his princess turns out to be in the same castle as he is.

Want to Know More?

Ironcladis available on Amazon.

Ironclad: Vikings, and Templars, and Magna Carta, Oh My!

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Derek Jacobi, Ironclad, James Purefoy, King John, Knights Templar, Magna Carta, Medieval England, Military Stuff, Monks and Nuns, Paul Giametti

Recently I decided that I needed to review a film on Tudor history. I turned on Netflix and went looking for one of the classics—Anne of the Thousand Days, A Man for All Seasons or perhaps one of Cate Blanchett’s movies about Elizabeth. I discovered two things. 1) Netflix has no films on Tudor history at all, just a bunch of not very good-looking documentaries. 2) Ironclad (2011, dir. Jonathan English). I’m not sure why Netflix suggested this film, because the only thing it has in common with any of the above films is that it’s set in England. But I faintly remembered hearing about it when it first came out, so I watched it.

It’s a small independent film; the financing was apparently such a big challenge that at one point they had to recast all the supporting roles, after Megan Fox dropped out. But despite the modest budget, it’s the largest independent film ever made in Wales. And, a little improbably, it’s based quite solidly in history, albeit with some important liberties.

The Siege of Rochester Castle

On June 15^th, 1215, King John reluctantly signed the Magna Carta, a charter of liberties in which he agreed to a variety of restrictions on his powers as king and lord of vassals. Most of the charter was limited to John’s relationship with his vassals and therefore applied only to nobles, but a few details applied to everyone in the country, most notably the establishment of what can be called the right of due process for all non-serfs and the abolition of double jeopardy in trials.

However, soon after John signed it, he repudiated it, and Pope Innocent III declared John released from his oath to support it. This triggered the First Barons’ War, in which the rebellious barons, supported by King Louis VIII of France, essentially attempted to depose John. The rebels were also supported by Stephen Langton, the archbishop of Canterbury.

In October, Langton sent the nobleman William d’Aubigny to occupy Rochester Castle. The castle had been in John’s hands, but the Magna Carta had required John to return it to Langton because it was the property of the archbishopric of Canterbury. John persuaded the castellan, Reginald de Cornhill, to open the gates and D’Aubigny occupied the castle with a small force, much to John’s great frustration. Rochester Castle controlled the southern road to London, which the rebels had taken control of. John could not risk bypassing Rochester, and so he laid siege to the castle for two months.

Rochester Castle. Note how close it is to Rochester Cathedral

John’s forces occupied the city of Rochester and destroyed the bridge linking the city to London, thus making it difficult for the rebels to relieve the siege. For two months, d’Aubigny’s small band of men, variously numbered between 85 and 150, struggled to keep hold off John. John’s forces broke through the outer wall of the castle, forcing the defenders to retreat to the keep. John’s forces sapped the keep, digging a tunnel under it and then burning the tunnel supports. This caused part of the keep to collapse, but the rebels held out in the part of the castle that remained. Some of the less-able-bodied defenders were forced to leave because of dwindling supplies, and some sources report that John cut off their hands and feet. Eventually, the remaining defenders surrendered; John imprisoned all of them, including d’Aubigny, except one archer whom John executed because the man had served him from childhood but then rebelled.

Sadly for John, the capture of Rochester did not improve his position significantly. He was able to force the rebels into a stalemate, but suffered a setback when his baggage train was lost crossing a tidal estuary. He contracted dysentery or something similar and died on October 18^th, 1216, about a year after starting the siege of Rochester.

King John was a complex figure. He was widely disliked by his nobles, and his various defeats sharply colored his posthumous reputation, especially in comparison with his more famous and accomplished father Henry II and brother Richard the Lion-hearted. He has been remembered by derisive nicknames such as ‘Lackland’ and ‘Softsword’, and most historical literature treats him poorly; he is, after all, the main villain in modern Robin Hood stories, and The Lion in Winter makes him seem like a pathetic joke.

King John

But in recent decades scholars have tended to paint a more balanced picture of John. They have pointed out that he was an extremely skilled solider; his forces never lost a battle at which he was present, but his great tragedy was that the two most critical battles of his reign were ones he was unable to be at. He was a talented administrator, who paid far more attention to his kingdom than his older brother did. His servants were deeply loyal to him, but he lacked the skills to manage the nobles and clergy who truly mattered politically. Like his father, he was possessed of both enormous energy and a ferocious temper, but at key moments he seems to have been paralyzed by inaction; one historian has suggested that he might have been bi-polar. All in all, I like John, far more than I like his brother Richard.

Ironclad

The plot of Ironclad focuses entirely on the siege of Rochester, and it follows the events of the siege fairly closely, albeit with some significant deviations. The main character is the entirely fictitious Thomas Marshall (James Purefoy), a Templar knight with some sort of dark secret that is never revealed. The film claims that the Templars were the main reason that John was forced to sign the Magna Carta, which is completely untrue. John had good relationships with the Templars, and relied on the advice of Aymeric de St. Maur, the master of the Order in England at the time. Aymeric encouraged him to sign the Magna Carta, but that’s a far cry from claiming that the Templars forced him into it.

Like Arn the Knight Templar, this film seems to suggest that one joins the Templars like one joins the modern military. There are suggestions that Thomas might be allowed to “take a leave” from the Templars, and at the end, Archbishop Langton tells Thomas that he’s “earned his freedom.” But joining a monastic order was a permanent conversion; men did not leave the Order after a period of time. However, an archbishop would have had the authority to release someone from their monastic oaths, although it would have been highly unusual to do so. One of the reasons men joined monastic orders was that it was thought to significantly increase the chance of salvation, so leaving a monastic order would not have been seen as a good thing by most people at the time.

Also, the film claims that Templars had a “vow of silence”. Vows of silence were a real thing, but they’ve been badly misunderstood. In general, monks were expected to focus their thoughts on spiritual matters and to avoid frivolous conversations. Some orders employed a simple form of sign language so that monks could communicate simple ideas without speaking. But most orders allowed monks to talk, at least at certain moments. Monks met regularly in chapter meetings to discuss matters of importance. At meals, they heard texts read to them. Some monastic rules set aside time for the brothers to converse. And of course they sang the liturgy multiple times a day. But these are not formal vows of silence, which was a practice only employed by a minority of medieval monastic orders. The Templars most certainly did not maintain a vow of silence, since as soldiers, they needed to communicate orders on the battlefield. Clearly the screenwriter hasn’t thought this issue through.

Also, Thomas uses a Braveheart-style great sword. If it was too early for William Wallace, it’s way too early for an early 13th century Templar. Thanks, Mel Gibson. Now everybody apparently needs to use great swords.

Purefoy as Thomas Marshall, with his great sword

Early in the film, Thomas and William d’Aubigny (Brian Cox) are sent by Stephen Langton to hold Rochester Castle against John. They do a Seven Samurai number and recruit five more soldiers and then go to Rochester, where they convince Reginald de Cornhill (Derek Jacobi) to let them hold the castle, But Cornhill has only eleven men, so 18 soldiers and a few servants are left to hold off John’s forces. This is an absurdly small group to hold even a small castle; in an actual siege, a group that small would have been overwhelmed on the first day of battle.

Historically, John hired a mixed group of continental mercenaries during the Baron’s War, but in this film he hires a band of pagan Danish Vikings. This is the worst anachronism of the film. The Danes had been Christian for more than 200 years by the Baron’s War. The only purpose served by making John’s men pagan Vikings seems to be to make John look bad, for employing pagans when he’s allied to the pope. It’s an egregiously silly detail in a film that in many respects strives to be true to events.

King John (Paul Giametti) is actually quite well-handled. The script is written to make John seem like a complete asshole, but Giametti manages to capture John’s fierce temper in a way that humanizes him. When John’s forces break into the castle bailey and capture d’Aubigny, John gets a monologue that is written to make him seem petulant, but Giametti transforms it into an angry tirade fueled by John’s quite legitimate complaint that his rights as king are not being respected. It’s a speech that captures something of the actual attitude that medieval kings had about their position.

The best part of this film

The film is also rather naïve about the Magna Carta. It is referenced as being a document “for the people” in a rather vague and unspecified way, as if it were a proto-constitution instead of the peace treaty it actually was. The film frames the Baron’s War as being a conflict between a tyrannical John and a group of nobles who are somehow champions of the common man. John was definitely being unreasonable, but nothing that he did prior to 1215 would have been seen as illegal or tyrannical; rather his nobles felt that he was abusing his rights as their lord, using legal rights in ways they had not been intended.

Despite all these problems, the film does a remarkably good job of following the outlines of the siege. Rochester Castle is realistically depicted (although it’s located out in the countryside, instead of in a city and within an arrow’s flight of Rochester Cathedral). When I watched the film, I thought that the siege details were being a little improbable, but upon researching the actual siege, I saw that the film actually follows the basic sequence of events fairly closely, although it plays with the time-frame of events somewhat, extending the first part of the siege and then compressing the later parts somewhat. But all the major details of the siege in the film have at least some basis in the actual siege, other than Thomas’ romance with Cornhill’s wife, and the deaths of Cornhill and d’Aubigny, both of whom are known to have survived the siege.

An Orgy of Violence

If you decide to watch Ironclad, be warned; it’s extremely violent. I’ve seen my fair share of modern action films, and this film goes somewhat beyond them. The film dwells on graphic violence in ways that I found a little shocking. The camera watches a number of extreme injuries, including the top of a man’s head being chopped off and a man being cut from shoulder to waist. In one particularly graphic shot, a man’s arm is hacked off, with four strokes that gradually hack through the bone. The film also dwells on John’s order to cut off d’Aubigny’s hands and feet.

I’m of two minds about the film’s use of graphic violence. One part of me feels that the film was being true to its nature as a war film and showing what war really looks like. In most Hollywood films, the graphic violence is somewhat ludicrous; limbs are easily chopped off even though most medieval swords weren’t sharp enough to accomplish that feat easily. In this film, the dismemberments actually seem plausible (d’Aubigny’s hands and feet are braced against wooden blocks, for example). The violence is shown as being psychologically brutal to the defenders of the castle; at the end of the film, Thomas and the two other survivors all seem moderately traumatized by what they’ve been through.

However, the other part of me feels that the film is just indulging in the pornography of violence that has become so common in modern action films. Many Hollywood films have decided to take the Grand Guignol approach to storytelling, without paying much attention to the consequences of the violence. So if you watch the film, be prepared for some gore.

Overall, the film takes some liberties with the facts, but fewer liberties than I was expecting. It’s a bit like The Warlord in that it’s a small-scale film, focused on a single conflict within a much larger picture, and it has a similar ending, with the hero worn down by his struggles. While I have some problems with this film, I’d rather watch a dozen films like this than a Braveheart or 300. Now I just have to hunt down a copy of a film on Tudor history.

Update: I review the sequel here.

Want to Know More?

Ironcladis available on Amazon. The best book I know on King John is W.L. Warren’s King John (English Monarchs), but it’s getting on in years. For a more recent take, and one more closely connected to this film, try Stephen Church’s King John: And the Road to Magna Cartadoes a good job of examining the Baron’s War and how it led to Magna Carta.